Ragù is one of the basic dishes prepared in province of Bologna. Just like in case of parmigiano there are some popular myths to address in this blog. Ragù is often called outside Italy ‘alla bolognese‘ and it usually means a sauce prepared of tomatoes and meet and served with pasta. If you wish to try the real ragù you need to visit Bologna or you can prepare it at home following my recipe. This is important, however, to use proper ingredients. In terms of difficulty this is an easy recipe but you need quite a bunch of ingredients and at least 2,5h to cook it.
Ingredients:
- 1 carrot
- celery
- 1 onion
- 1 cup of white wine
- 100g of lard
- 800g of minced meet (the best is mix of pork and beef)
- 150g of sausage (however, it needs to be RAW, so if you’re not in Italy you can use a sort of raw meet with spices like garlic, etc.)
- 1 cup of can tomatoes (in Italy passata di pomodoro is used so if you have access to it, then use it)
- 1/2 cup of milk
- salt, pepper
- 1 large spoon of butter
- 2-3 spoons of oil
Start with oil: put it in a large pot and when it’s warm add chopped vegetables (carrot, celery and onion) and wait until it’s fried (about 5 min). Then add butter and lard and let it melt. When the lard has already changed a color add sausage and try to shred everything so you get very small pieces. At this point you need to add all minced meet you have and salt it. This is quite a large amount of meet so you need to work on it shredding and mixing carefully. When the meet has slightly changed color this is the right time to add tomatoes mixed with milk. It should become very liquid, a soup like. The last ingredient you add is white wine.
Now, the longer it cooks the better it gets. I would say it needs at least 2 hours of slow cooking. This is the time needed to melt all fat and the wine to evaporate. You should mix it from time to time to not to burn the pot. You’ll know when it’s ready if you checked the consistency: take a spoon of sauce and spill it on a plate. If the liquid is dense then you know it’s ready.
As a dish it is served with pasta called tagliatelle (the one prepared of eggs and of a ribbon shape), used in traditional lasagne or as I previously written over cappellacci, mailny in Ferrara province.
Old traditional kitchen scale
